KPMG, one of the big four accounting firm with 236,000 employees and $32 billion in yearly revenue, has bought bitcoin and ethereum for its treasury reserves.
“Investors such as hedge funds and family offices to large insurers and pension funds are increasingly gaining exposure to cryptoassets, and traditional financial services such as banks, financial advisors and brokerages are exploring offering products and services involving cryptoassets,” Benjie Thomas, Managing Partner at KPMG in Canada, says before adding:
“This investment reflects our belief that institutional adoption of cryptoassets and blockchain technology will continue to grow and become a regular part of the asset mix.”
They do not reveal just how much they bought exactly, either bitcoin or eth, but a governance committee was established to provide oversight and approve the treasury allocation.
“We’ve invested in a strong cryptoassets practice and we will continue to enhance and build on our capabilities across Decentralized Finance (DeFi), Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and the Metaverse, to name a few. We expect to see a lot of growth in these areas in the years to come,” says Kareem Sadek, Advisory Partner at KPMG in Canada.
Gemini was used for the purchase and acts as a custodian, with this being one of the few long established companies to buy crypto for their treasury.
It’s not clear however whether that’s as a strategy or to show they have the skills to advise and account for crypto holdings in treasury reserves.
Numerous companies have taken this approach, including Tesla and Microstrategy, as well as most stock traded miners but also lesser known companies with Coinbase claiming they have 10,000 institutional investors.
KPMG clearly expects this to be a growing space and potentially one way to differentiate itself in services it provides to its clients, which may suggest it’s just a matter of time until the other big four join.
This signals in addition the acknowledgment of the crypto space which Thomas calls “a maturing asset class.”
Service providers therefore may need to advise clients on crypto strategy more and more with some studies suggesting 10% of holdings should be put in bitcoin or eth for higher risk adjusted returns.
Whether KPMG in Canada is advising the same to their clients is not clear, but bitcoin may be slowly and unnoticeably moving towards something that you have on your balance sheet.
Source: https://www.trustnodes.com/2022/02/08/top-four-accounting-firm-buys-bitcoin-and-eth-for-treasury-reserves